Shura is the guardian of the house of Capricorn, one of the last strongholds in place before reaching the Pope's chamber in Athena's Sanctuary. When the Bronze Saints make their way through the houses in order to save Athena’s life, Dragon Shiryu squares off against Shura. Little does Shiryu know that Shura has one deadly technique, the Excalibur, up his sleeve. Faced with low odds of defeating Shura, Dragon Shiryu mounts a suicide attack that would send both Saints into the heavens, where they would disintegrate into the stars.

During their ascent into oblivion, Shura comes to realize that his way of thinking was flawed and saves Shiryu.

Shura not only saves Shiryu life, but he also entrusts the young Dragon Saint with his ultimate technique.

So here we are, on the last stretch of the EX Gold Saints and the highly-anticipated Shura has finally gotten the EX treatment.

The box for this release is just like any other EX Saint Cloth Myth release: a nice sturdy box shaped like the Pandora Box of the Saint, which is covered with a nice glossy sleeve.

The Object Mode for the Capricorn Cloth is a goat.

This Cloth is very easy to put together and stays together pretty well. Unfortunately, its simplicity is also one of its weaknesses. The Capricorn Cloth lacks size and presence, which makes it not as cool as similar Cloths, like the Aries Cloth.

The Object Mode also comes with a separate, more abstract face, which is used in conjunction with the smaller headpiece, to display the Cloth as it appears in the manga.

This makes the bland Object Mode look even blander, due to the addition of the nondescript face.

When you put the armor on Shura, however, he looks really great.

The fit between the Cloth and the Saint is also great. The only minor issue, and I do mean minor, with the fit is that the thigh armor slides down from time to time. This minute inconvenience with the EX Capricorn is nowhere near as bad as it was on the original figure; the thigh armor for the original release would slide off the thighs and tuck halfway into the top of the leg armor. Bandai kept this from happening with the EX release by having a set of kneepads underneath the top of leg armor. This keeps the thigh armor from straying too far from its proper place.Another major improvement is that the back of the waist armor has slots on it that the skirt armor slides into. This keeps the skirt armor from opening up to the sides, which was another issue with the original release.

Plastic content is kept to the absolute minimum with the release.

Only the helmet, waist armor and the covers for the backs of the hands are made of plastic. The rest is all shiny, sexy diecast metal!

Now I am not a big fan of the anime-only helmet of Shura. I much prefer the smaller, more sensible headpiece from the manga and the later part of the anime series. So that is the last of the big ol’ helmet we are going to be seeing in this review.

Articulation is top notch, even with all of the armor on the Saint.

Compared to the original release, the EX Capricorn Shura looks a TON better.

The proportions of both the figure and the armor are much more in step with how the character looks in the show. The color of the EX release is a toned-down gold color that lacks the orange accents and panels lines are present on the original’s armor. The EX release clearly aspires to represent Shura as he appears in the Hades chapter. On the other hand, the original release is based on how the character looks in the early episodes.

The EX release also lacks some of the liberties that Bandai took with the first design, such as the sideways “s” on the back of the skirt armor, the symbols on the back of the hands and the spikes on the shoulder pads. Whoever designed the armor for the original Saint Cloth Myth Gold Saints got kind of creative with some of the armors in order to make the look “cooler.” I personally prefer that the toy looks as closely to the original as possible. That is why the EX versions wins over the original.

Shura comes with a respectable 5 pairs of hands.

But who are we kidding, only one set of hands really matters for this Saint, whose arms are imbued with the razor-sharp Excalibur. With the nicely sculpted excalibur hands, you can go nuts posing him pulling off his signature move!

Ekkuscalibar (Excalibur)!

One Excalibur!

Two Excaliburs!

Legs-calibur!

Shura also comes with four faceplates.

Since he is not a very expressive character, his set of faceplates reflects his demeanor in the show. This does not make for the most exciting assortment of expressions.

Finally, Shura also comes with a nice two-color, three-piece cape.

So overall, Shura looks great and is a fun toy to pose... into whatever Excalibur pose you want to put him in. While there is nothing in this release that has not already been done in the line, this is another solid release in the EX line.

Plus, the EX Shiryu can finally face off against Shura in their most epic battle yet!

Comments

Very cool! Did you by any chance also have the issue of not being able to attach the antenna piece into the mouth of the Object Mode to form the tongue?I am kind of miffed that mine was like that.
I just hope that there are no issues with Papillon Myu, since that is the next Web Exclusive I am buying.

I just left the armor off for now. I'm too lazy to put it on (and the tongue issue made me worried too) she does look fine regardless. If this is to be believed http://mrtrainfreak12.deviantart.com/art/Love-between-a-wo-man-and-a-Demon-god-407337275

I always wonder why Bandai use different shades of gold for different Saints. Over the past week, I got my first few Gold Saints: Aries, Libra, and Gemini. All the originals, not the EX versions. The Aries Cloth is a much lighter shade of gold, Gemini and Libra are the same shade of very dark orange-gold. I think Capricorn has the lightest colors of all twelve.

Good review as always, do you have the Libra EX ordered yet? He should be out in Japan by month's end, probably another month before American retailers have him.

They probably used different shades of gold/orange to differentiate the cloths. Similar to how they added some extra accents and symbols on the cloths.

I do have the EX Libra on pre-order. Unfortunately, several of the Japanese retailers are no longer selling the EX Gold Saints to the US market. So I have to wait till the American retailers get them, not that there is anything wrong with buying from the American webistes. However, that is why I am publishing my reviews of the EX Gold Saints more than a month after the Japanese release.

I figured with Capricorn you were just debating about getting it. I order all my new stuff through a local import shop, usually get everything six weeks from release date, so I am used it.

Did you hear about the new SS PS3 game? Called Brave Soldiers. It's a fighting game that covers the three primary arcs of the series(Sanctuary, Poseidon, Hades) and has playable characters from each. Counting DLCs, some 60 characters or so. But, like Naruto or DBZ games, they count each costume change as a separate character. And we are getting it state-side! But only through the PSN. Although traditional gamers can just order the European physical copy, it's exactly the same as the one through the PSN for North America.

Nah. For me, there is no debating about the EX Gold Saints. I am down for getting them all.

Have I ever! I have been watching every Brave Soldiers trailer that comes out. Though I don't usually buy many games at launch, I am definitely picking up Brave Soldiers when it comes out on the PSN. I thought about buying a physical copy from Mexico, since I have family there. But I think it is more important to show that there is a demand here in the US. Then maybe down the road, we will get more Saint Seiya stuff here in the Sates.

Yes, I am thinking the same thing(I had not heard that anyone in NA was getting a physical copy, only Japan, Europe and South America). More people buy it off PSN, better chance of getting other stuff released. I am pretty sure we are even getting this game because the movies are selling decently, and New Video Group is releasing the (allegedly) full Sanctuary Arc anime episodes, subbed, in December. I will wait a while if the price is the same as a standard PS3 game, I can't justify spending $60 on a fighting game, even if it is Saint Seiya.

Very cool! I was not aware that New Media Group had picked up the Saint Seiya TV license. I looked it up and they have the pre-order on Amazon, plus their pre release is on several sites, so it must be legit. The last I heard, Discotek was thinking about donig the rest of the series if the movies sold well. I am just glad that we can finally get the rest of Sanctuary with a good video quality.

I know what you mean, the last fighting game I bought at retail price was Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, and I still regret it to this day. But with Saint Seiya Brave Soldiers, I think I will get my money's worth since I have several friends ( both on and off-line) that I can spend the holiday season playing against.

It definintely seems like that little piece of news just flew under the radar. It would be cool if they do the remainder of the seires, since the only avaiilable subs of Poseidon and Asgard arc have pretty bad subtitles and video quality.

Did you see the new teaser image for the Saint Seiya CG movie? That movie just needs to come out! It was announced at the same time as Saint Seiya Omega, and we have stilll yet to see anything about the CCG movie besides teasers images.

That movie, for a couple of years, seems like it's Ghostbusters 3. Everyone talks about it, it's been rumored for years and years, and we still haven't gotten any closer to having it. I want to wait for some actual info before I will get excited. A cast, a release date, a trailer. Something other than images I could whip up in photoshop.

I wonder if they shifted their focus away from the movie when Omega turned out to be popular enough. I think the new teaser image had a date on it, but I don't think it was confirmed IF the teaser was actually for the movie or something else altogether.

Okay, I know this is a bit late for commenting, but I just had to say something somewhere, lol.

I recently found your reviews and started looking through them all, and they really are very good, and detailed! =)
I am buying all of the Myth Cloth EX Series ever since they started, but nevertheless, it's still interesting to read about other people's opinions on them =P

I really like the pictures you take, the poses and camera angles are awesome! (that last pic cracked me up, btw, lol)

I am curious though, that Excalibur effect you use in those pics, does it come with the figure itself? I am a bit behind on buying them all, for budget reasons mainly, so I still have to get Capricorn... and it looks incredible =D

Most of the EX figures are super-duper well made. However, while I don't even notice in most of figures, a few of them make me wonder why the abdomen just had to be so thin. Shura is one of them, maybe because the lack of details of his waist armor or because it's much thinner than his chest armor (or both). That's funny especially because when he first appears on the show he kinda looks like a juicer gym boy with his big chest.

Besides that, I thought we could get a version of his right arm partially amputed by Shiryu (but I think we could just take his hand off, lol).

But it's still a great release (and a great review!), even if it's not one of my favorite characters. His manga helmet is an absolute charm! The other helmet is cool too, but even on the show it looked strange with its enormous horns. By the way, just as asked above, does the Excalibur effect part come with this release?